I found the Dutch girl sitting in a corner with her back to the windows, through which Marie and the women were gazing at the bustle and uproar and growing excitement of the street. She was reading in a great dusty book, and did not look up when I entered. Seeing her so engrossed, I had the curiosity to ask her, before I gave her my lady's message, what the book was.
'"The Siege of Leyden,"' she said, lifting her pale face for an instant, and then returning to her reading. 'By Bor.'
I could not refrain from smiling. It seemed to me so whimsical that she could find interest in the printed page, in this second-hand account of a siege, and none in the actual thing, though she had only to go to the window to see it passing before her eyes. Doubtless she read in Bor how men and women thronged the streets of Leyden to hear each new rumour; how at every crisis the bells summoned the unarmed to church; how through long days and nights the citizens waited for relief--and she found these things of interest. But here were the same portents passing before her eyes, and she read Bor!
'You are busy, I am afraid,' I said.
'I am using my time,' she answered primly.
'I am sorry,' I rejoined; 'for my lady wants you to go to church with her.'
She shut up her book with peevish violence, and looked at me with her weak eyes. 'Why does not your Papist go with her?' she said spitefully. 'And then you could do without me. As you do without me when you have secrets to tell! But I suppose you have brought things to such a pass now that there is nothing for it but church. And so I am called in!'
'I have given my lady's message,' I said patiently.
'Oh, I know that you are a faithful messenger!' she replied mockingly. 'Who writes love letters grows thin; who carries them, fat. You are growing a big man, Master Martin.'